ALSA with dmix, clicking/popping noise on stream playback

EvanPurkhiser · 2011-05-29 11:03:49

Hey!

I have been having a bit of trouble setting up ALSA, It seemed my sounds devices weren't running through dmix, after some tweaking with my .asoundrc I managed to get my two devices (My speakers and my headset) running through the DMIX plugin.

However I noticed that in Mangler ( http://www.mangler.org/ ) every time someone in my channel talked (IE a new alsa playback stream opened) there would be a small clicking noise.

I'm not in arch right now so I can't post my exact .asoundrc file, but here is what it generally looks like (I can post the full one if requested!)

pcm.headset {
  type dmix
  ...  
  slave.pcm {
    type hw
    card 0
    channels 2
  }
}
...

It only seems to happen when I'm using my DMIXed device. If I set mangler to use the headset directly (hw:2,0) then there is no clicking, however only one person can ever talk at one time in the channel.

If anyone has any idea what I might be able to do to eliminate the clicking noise I would appreciate it!
Thanks!

Last edited by EvanPurkhiser (2011-05-29 22:29:13)

brebs · 2011-05-29 14:11:31

EvanPurkhiser wrote:

eliminate the clicking noise

Some audio players, even audacious 2.5.1, have had this problem for as long as I can remember. IIRC xmms2 solves the problem by keeping the channels open between songs.

I assume the click is a hardware problem, caused by static electricity?

In my ALSA playings, I've only ever managed to *increase* the static pop

There are other settings to play with, e.g. buffer_size and period_size - here's my ~/.asoundrc

Try muting all outputs one-by-one with the M key, in alsamixer.

Last edited by brebs (2011-05-29 14:12:58)

EvanPurkhiser · 2011-05-29 21:42:06

I did a little bit more tinkering. here are a couple things I noticed

The clicking still occurs when I use my motherboards sound instead of my USB headset.

In alsamixer the PCM slider doesn't seem to affect anything for my motherboards sound. The headset device doesn't even have a PCM slider.

Still not sure what is causing the noise. It could also be referred to as a Popping or Crackle right before the audio.

Edit: I now suspect it has something to do with power savings mode https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … g_Playback (can't believe I didn't notice these section in troubleshooting earlier!)

Edit 2: Disabling power savings by adding

options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

to my /etc/modprob.d/sound.conf did not seems to stop the poping when played through that device

Edit 3: while playing audio through Mplayer on the same device, and a sound is made through mangler on that device, a popping noise still occurs. This leads me to believe its not a issue with power-saving (the amp's not turning off or on if I'm constantly using the device.) For some reason I feel like this might have somthing to do with my PCM slider's not affecting the volume? It has to be a option in my .asoundrc with dmix >.<

Edit 4: Using pulseaudio fixes this problem, but I would prefer to not add an extra layer of complexity to my system!

Last edited by EvanPurkhiser (2011-05-29 23:03:31)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-29 11:03:49

ALSA with dmix, clicking/popping noise on stream playback

#2 2011-05-29 14:11:31

Re: ALSA with dmix, clicking/popping noise on stream playback

#3 2011-05-29 21:42:06

Re: ALSA with dmix, clicking/popping noise on stream playback

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